


The Learning Process

by parodySphoria



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, and people practise martial arts on their roofs, are they all chill i hope they're all chill, because lonely texan, comment and tell me about texas, dave awkwardly explains something he knows nothing about, hot and buildingy, i know it's hot, i swear it's mostly cowboys, i'm british i know nothing of texas, k n o w l e d g e i s p o w e r, karkat learns about human romance, knowledge is power!, meteor shit, no smut here i'm sorry, nothing of texas and its probably intricate community spirit, oh no theyre talking, or something like that, prompted by a friend, thankyou tom, who even lives in houston
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-19
Updated: 2014-09-19
Packaged: 2018-02-18 01:04:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2329565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parodySphoria/pseuds/parodySphoria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>aka "The Aftermath of the Penis Ouija"<br/>Carried on from canonical events.</p><p>An altercation becomes uncomfortably physical as the meteor nears a dream bubble, Dave and Karkat realise they aren't such bad company after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Learning Process

"This altercation is becoming uncomfortably physical! Get the fuck away from me!" Karkat barely manages to choke out, Dave's arm still tight around his throat.

"What are you talking about?" Dave asks, his voice making him seem bored no matter what he says, and only succeeding in infuriating Karkat further.

The troll growls, how can the human act so _stupid?_ , "You know what I'm talking about!"

"Shut up and draw another penis." Dave says, already struggling to move their hands back to the yellowing pages of Rose's book to complete the masterpiece.

The young troll scoffs, struggling to pull his hand out from underneath Dave's own, "You don't even understand the social implications of all this hostile touching and grabbing do you?!" He pulls back again, only succeeding in pulling Dave's arm up to his jaw; he can feel the human tighten his grip, "I don't feel that way about you Strider, just step off!"

Dave almost laughs, pushing the pen back down to the paper briefly before Karkat pulls it off again, "Man if you want to look at this that way then that's your business, this is just an old fashioned beatdown where I'm from deal with it."

"Why don't you old fashioned go fuck yourself!" Karkat yells, pulling a leg up on the table to try and push himself away from Dave, somehow managing to pull himself closer to the infuriating coolkid in the process. The human's cape brushes the troll's face and he bites it, pulling at it to try and pull Dave off balance while simultaneously hitting Dave in the side of the head with his only free arm.

"Stop biting my cape." Dave says, rolling his shoulder back against the troll to try and dislodge him, to which Karkat retorts a seriously muffled "fuck you" and pushes back as hard as he can against Dave's vice-like grip, the human's arm gone from around his neck and now gripping his shoulder as he tries to lean back and out of reach of Karkat's punching hand.

He leans back too far, however, and before either of them can do anything to prevent it they're plummeting to the hard floor, tangled, Karkat still punching and yelling. They struggle their way a good few metres from where they started, and when Dave sits up he looks behind him to find Karkat struggling, tangled in the material of the human's cape. He tries to stand to relieve the problem, but Karkat only seems to get wrapped up further in the material, swinging his arms aimlessly as if that's going to help him in the slightest.

"Are you serious?" Dave asks as Karkat flails, recieving a muffled sentence that was probably mostly swear words in response, "Dude unreal, you are like a cape magnet."

Dave grabs hold of Karkat's sides, wrapped tightly in the dark red material - Karkat struggles more, seemingly put into fight or flight mode by the enveloping darkness of the cape, "Hold still" Dave tries to tell him, but Karkat continues to struggle and swear at him. Dave is pretty sure Karkat just called him a 'douchemuffin' but whatever.

He lifts the troll up and over his head easily - Karkat is lighter than he expected - and practically slams the troll backwards onto the table in the most elaborate suplex anyone else in the room has ever witnessed. It does the trick though, and when Karkat lands on his back amongst the toppled artifacts littering the table - as Dave enthusiastically "BOO-YAH"s - he's free of the confines of the cape and everyone can clearly hear his hateful, swear-filled protest to how awful that maneuver was.

He doesn't have much time to yell, and in fact when the intercom system booms with the sound of Terezi's voice Dave's barely had time to get up off the floor.

"Everybody stop what you're doing immediately, whatever it might be!" The loud, exaggerated voice crackles from the gramophone on the table, blasting Karkat's ears and causing him to flinch, "Another dream bubble is approaching rapidly, everyone man your stations!" she pauses at this, almost thoughtfully, "By which I mean go about your business as usual I guess... Unless you want to meet me up here and check it out! Over!"

Dave sits up on the floor, looking up at the gramophone as it crackles off, nobody in the room moves for a moment, Karkat having resigned to his place on the table and Kanaya still eyeing him worriedly.

Rose turns to her to speak, pointedly not speaking to either of the boys, "Kanaya I think we should go up and join Terezi for a while, we can leave the books for now, surely."

"What?" Kanaya says, looking to Rose before glancing to the two boys, "Oh. Yes. Shall we?"

The two of them leave, Dave watching them in confusion, "Should we come with?"

Rose turns at the door leading up to the roof, "No no, you two _chill_ here, no need for the knights to protect us from our own memories, is there now?"

"I guess not." Dave says, "See ya later."

Dave stands up, picking up the mugs from the floor and heading back to the coffee machine. As he passes Karkat - still on the table - he notices the troll looking at the open pages of Rose's book, flicking back between the previous page and the ones they had defaced.

"Imagine if someone found that in like, years to come, and thought it was some kind of ancient code, or like an encryption?" The human wonders out loud in Karkat's direction as he hits the coffee machine. The troll scoffs in return, pausing for a significant amount of time before actually answering.

"Or they would just assume some asshole from the past thought it was okay to proposition a troll he barely knows in the company of two females."

Dave laughs, barely, hitting the coffee machine again, "Oh come on don't be stupid they'd never work all that out."

"So you're not denying you were propositioning me?" Karkat points out, almost smugly as he sits up on the table. Dave turns around from the machine, raising an eyebrow at the troll on the table.

"Well I clearly wasn't. Do you know exactly nothing about humans or are you just always this stupid and close-minded?"

"Me?! Close-minded?! Just because I don't give a shit about your boring, pointless one-quadrant system?! I am insulted, Strider, I don't see you lining up to talk about the troll romance system!"

The human shakes his head, the coffee machine long forgotten, "Well Karkat you just gave me a free lesson and to be honest dude I already knew alot about your system anyway. Four quadrants, duh, two reproductive two supportive, for some reason they're based on card suits and they go from red to pale to ashen to black. What more do I need to know?"

"You... You-" Karkat starts up, attempting to find something to be angry about and finding nothing.

Dave leans forward at his small victory, smirking, "Can you tell me anything about human romance?"

"It's just red?" Karkat says, and he's actually questioning himself when he says it, "I don't fucking know, can _you_ even tell me about human romance?"

Dave rolls his eyes so hard his head actually moves, and he goes back towards the table, sitting on the floor facing the troll as he speaks, "Well not from first hand experience, but I know it's not like your red shit, not entirely anyway."

"Well what's it like, then?"

The two of them seem to be weighing eachother up, based on sincerity and involvement in this conversation.

"It's like a mixture, I guess?" Dave starts, looking more at the floor than at the troll, "Like, it's not pity, not in the human sense of the word, but it's close? Like, _hey I really like this person and I'd hate to see them hurt so I'm going to do all I can to not let that happen_ but like, I guess you could say that's like friendship too?" he sighs, "It's a really blurred line. But it's like, you see someone, and you like them, and you want all of them and you don't want anyone else to have them. I guess it's a little more selfish than troll romance, like if one of you guys wanted someone in every quadrant."

Karkat perks up at that, "So is there blackrom in there too?"

"No, not really... I mean sometimes I guess you can find the other person fucking infuriating and you argue, but in our culture, doing all the violent courtship shit is kind of illegal, and even mildly it's a kink people kind of frown upon."

"It's because you're easier to damage." Karkat clarifies as though he knows it perfectly, Dave actually laughs.

"Yeah I guess you're right on that one. But it's got elements of all of them - you don't have to be in a _quadrant_ to make sure your bro is okay or calm him down, friends can do that, lovers can do that-"

"Lovers." Karkat clarifies, and the word seems as alien as it is to him when he says it, as if he's never said it out loud. Dave knows the trolls use that word too, but Karkat seems to revel in how it sounds.

"Yeah. Human relationships, it's like a friend you're so close to you don't want anyone else to have them how you have them." Dave says, nodding at his summary.

"So how do you know? How do you know when they're a friend and when they're a lover?"

Dave laughs, "I don't fucking know man I never had friends in person and I sure as hell never had a lover."

"You could have done, though."

Dave chooses to ignore that, "I guess it's a little difficult to distinguish, I mean I'm sure there are plenty of our films you could sample that would explain this shit better than I do."

Karkat nods, "Human relationships are..."

"Weird, wrong, stupid..." Dave offers sarcastically, but Karkat shakes his head.

"Complicated?" Karkat says, looking up from the floor and locking eyes with Dave, a bemused expression on his face.

Dave lets himself grin, pushing up his glasses to rub at his eyes tiredly, "Yeah I guess they are a little."

They sit in relative silence for a moment, the air heavy with unanswered questions both of them are a little too nervous to ask. In the end, Karkat pulls the book back towards him.

"So human dicks, huh? As if I didn't already have a million reasons to regret making your universe."

"Hey man don't look at me you were the one holding the pen." Dave laughs, lifting his hands in surrender.

Karkat's trying to sound angry, but he's smiling, "Why the fuck, out of everything I could have drawn, would I draw your disfigured genitals?"

Dave scoffs, leaning back on his hands, "Hey man my genitals are just goddamn fine, I don't even want to know what you got to compare my dick to."

Karkat rolls his eyes, yawning loudly into his hands.

"Man you should probably get some sleep."

"Fuck you and your suggestions, we're passing through a dream bubble, what if I wake up in your shitty world's lava or some bullshit?"

"Whatever Vantas just making a friendly suggestion." Dave says, standing up from his spot on the floor, "I might go for a wander for a little while, see what I can see."

"You want some company?" Karkat offers, standing up, "In case you wind up in the assfuck of nowheresville and have nobody to talk to?"

The human looks down at the angry troll, trying to judge his sincerity. Karkat looks up at him evenly, his expression open and waiting. The human smiles, "Yeah sure, I could use somebody to tell me exactly why everything I'm doing is the wrong thing." He starts walking out towards the door, the troll catching up with him and shoving his shoulder.

"Without me as your leader you'd be lost and you know it."

"Lost? Maybe. Happier with my life? Definitely."

Karkat swears at him and feigns a punch, revelling in silent glee when he sees Dave flinch in preparation. What shocks him most, as the two of them walk out into the influence of the dream bubble, is the fact he wants to ask Dave more about humans - not just their romance, but life, their culture... He wants to know more, because the humans have been practically forced to learn about the trolls since they arrived on the meteor. He doesn't know enough about them, and that annoys him more than Dave ever could.

One thing he does know, though, is that Dave is a better person than he'd previously thought him to be, and he doesn't mind being stuck with him for the next few hours in the slightest.

**Author's Note:**

> Shoutout to my friend Tom for prompting this fic !!
> 
> I have nothing left to say on the matter.  
> Comments are super welcome, especially if they're explaining to me what it's like in Texas.
> 
> xoMegan


End file.
